The sun began to rise in the ‘eastern’ sky, and Mark was still on the deck of the Dreadnought, poking at various things inside of his house, transitioning from ‘dreamsight’ to ‘realsight’ and seeing what changed as the orb of orichalcum absorbed into his body. The orb was about 90% gone right now, and Mark’s house and astral body were feeling a lot more normal. Not quite normal at all! But on the way.
Mark estimated he was at an overall 35% of his original strength.
In the real world, Mark had set out a bunch of adamantium orbs in concentric circles, in dollops of black, at about 50 centimeter intervals. In the dream world, Mark gazed upon his orbular house, where some staircases of Union circled up and down the orb, allowing him to stand on the roof and also to go down, to circle underneath the house and look at all of the tunnels everywhere down there. There were no real tunnels, though. Just expanses of staircases and stone walkways leading out into the rest of the dream. Mark had put some extra rooms inside, to help make it all orbular, including an attic and a basement.
It was a weird house.
Sometimes Mark would activate his mirror fragment and look out and see elves looking at him with clear intrigue. Once, he saw a trio of guys standing a kilometer away, each of them dressed in finery, each of them debating the merits of his house design. Their own houses were normal-shaped things, with multiple floors and gardens and trees and whatever. They reminded Mark of a bunch of old guys critiquing a new house going up in their neighborhood, which was, perhaps, exactly what was happening.
They all vanished when they caught Mark looking.
Mark loved his weird house a lot, but he still didn’t know what to make of it; not really.
He had figured out a few things.
Mark went into his house and shrunk the staircases, brought the ceiling down to a reasonable height instead of having 20 meter tall ceilings, and he got rid of the attic and the basement. A sense of possibility filled the house as he did that.
Mark opened his sight to the real world, to the twilight sky, and he turned his attention to the concentric dots of adamantium scattered around the deck. He reached out with kinesis, grabbing and lifting each dollop of adamantium in the nearest 27 meters, according to Quark’s overlay.
“No effort needed at 27 meters,” Mark softly said to himself. “That’s about a quarter of what it used to be… Now let’s go for actual effort.”
He stretched himself thin, threading his astral body in every direction, grabbing hold of every bit of adamantium he sensed out there. When he opened his eyes, a few of the dollops fell out of his control. Quark marked each one, and Mark turned his attention in those directions to grab the dollops again.
After 5 minutes of straining for control Mark looked at the most distant dollops and Quark measured.
59 meters for average, all-around adamantium distance.
He moved on to the next test; his full, one-directional range. The numbers were a little better. 100 meters for full-range, one direction, though the ability to grab at that distance was pretty weak. Grabbing at 80 meters was a lot easier.
Mark used to have 120-ish meters of casual distance for Adamantiumkinesis, and 500 meters for max range.
Distance got a whole lot harder to do when you got bigger, just because the area to cover out there was a whole lot more. So Mark had actually lost about 85% of his Adamantiumkinesis range. Maybe more.
Letting the adamantium go, Mark turned his attention to Union.
Union had suffered much the same fate as Adamantiumkinesis. His average range had been 1,200 meters in one direction, but now his max range was 500 meters in one direction.
His average range in every direction had been 600 meters, but now, as Mark relaxed, he could only feel the people in the center of the ship, and half of the castle back there. He could not reach the entire ship. Mark refocused for distance and he felt out Isoko and Sally on the observation deck of the Dreadnought, way up there, looking down at him. They were concerned.
A lot of people were concerned right now.
Mark was one of them.
Mark went back into his soul-dream and added an upstairs balcony.
He had a ‘feeling’ that he was at maybe 90% house capacity.
He came back and checked on the ranges of his Powers.
While focused, with Adamantiumkinesis, Mark was able to grab at 80 meters in 1 direction, and 30 meters in all directions, which was down from 100 and 60… But really only left/right/forward/back.
Mark did another test, stretching his Kinesis up, and also down, pushing himself up into the air. Quark measured that test as 20 meters in every direction, and 80 meters in 1 direction.
Mark went back down, and he made his house as small as possible, leaving himself with only a half-meter between all the stuff inside.
Floating in the air again, Quark measured Mark’s 1-directional max at 120, though 100 felt actually-secure, and his all rounder distance was at 30 meters.
“Do those numbers seem to follow patterns to you, aside from the smaller the house, the longer the range?” Mark asked.
“I believe that might be exactly what is happening, though I do wonder at the mangling of your Binding right now. Everything is all over the place. Perhaps that is the real issue with your range? When your Binding wasn’t mangled, you had a much greater range.”
Mark paused.
It was like a sun had risen when he wasn’t looking.
“Ah, fuck. Is that it?” Mark rapidly decided, “Okay! Let’s go in and see if I can make it all more holistic and natural.”
After 20 minutes of arranging, Mark had placed adamantium tools throughout his house.
Utensils sat in kitchen drawers and adamantium locks guarded in the doors. He put adamantium trim onto the entire house, and he even did a few things that Eria had suggested, like putting a weather vane on the roof made of adamantium, but threaded through with Union. From there, Mark fixed up his house in the other ways that Eria had mentioned. He connected the plumbing of the Body with Union, with the dreamlands outside of his house, making black grasses sprout up and grow strong around the house. The black grasses were not the dreamlands, but were his Body, and his Union, and his Adamantiumkinesis.
Mark was the entire house, and everything in it, but the expression of such could be changed at a whim, causing generalized changes to his Powers.
All the while Quark spoke of how Mark’s Binding looked to him, and soon, with both of them working together, Mark Binding flexed and settled into something a lot more natural-looking.
Mark came out of his trance and he breathed and he felt amazing. Invigorated, truly.
Like he was home.
He smirked at the thought of being something like a snail right now, carrying his home wherever he went… That thought suddenly reminded him of the snails that infested the Wilds around Memphi, in particular the dark snails. Those guys would vanish, becoming undetectable, if they were sensed or seen at all. Were those snails doing the same kind of magic that the elves around here, did—
Mark told Quark about that, and told him to bring it up later so Mark could think it through again when he wasn’t already busy.
Because he was very busy right now.
Mark got to experimenting with range once again.
Whatever he had done to his Binding had worked, a lot. Sally and Isoko and now Andria were way up there at the command center, looking down at him from 450 meters away, talking about big things. Whatever those big things were, Mark could not tell. But he could Unionsense them now, without stretching that way at all. That was the weather vane he had put into his soul, for sure.
Adamantiumkinesis’s range was up to a very healthy 250 meters, 1 direction, and 80-all-rounder. Mark’s ability to thread his astral body had gotten a lot better.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
His Adamantine Immortal Body simply felt amazing. It was a fresh-from-the-shower and dry and warm feeling, but also a content sort of feeling…
Mark went into his Binding and removed the fridge. He still had the memories of the food therein, but he wasn’t content anymore. He came back to the real world, and he was hungry, and it was a good kind of hunger.
Mark gathered up his adamantium and let it turn into scale mail against his skin, into gauntlets and armor. And yeah, it ripped up his clothes… Oh.
Back inside the house, Mark created some super soft adamantium webweave, and also a few different clothes, all of which got put into a closet in the wall.
He came back to the real world and turned his scalemail into webweave, then into big armor, then into normal clothes. Pants, shirt, and underwear. The armor was hard, the clothes were soft. All of it was adamantium, though.
Mark grinned as he moved his body, stretching and then rolling his shoulders, bending over and then separating his bottom half from his top half. Mark regrew himself from his bottom half, and he turned his top half into reserve adamantium that he swished around into a spear and armor, then back into a pile to the side.
“Don’t think I want to test out the true resurrective capabilities, though,” Mark said to himself, as he watched the sun rise completely.
And then, like glows in the air, a line of lights appeared in front of the Dreadnought, leading the way forward across the lands, to the pathways home. To Earth? To Daihoon? Mark wasn’t sure. He was pretty sure Eria had said ‘Earth’. Didn’t really matter, anyway. Either one was good.
Mark called out through the comms, “Time to get a move on!”
Eliot called back, “Systems ready. Hitting the gas.”
The purple/yellow hoverring of the Dreadnought briefly grew brighter, and then the Dreadnought began to flow forward, into the nearest glowing light. The light burst, flowing away on the wind, and the Dreadnought kept going.
Lola spoke up, “I’m making breakfast, Mark. Would you like to have some today?”
Mark grinned brightly. “I really, truly would.”
Mark felt as Lola’s vector down below suddenly flickered with deep, vibrant hope. Isoko, Sally, Andria, and Eliot, all felt a similar amount of satisfaction, while David and Derek merely felt secure.
Lola asked, “Any requests?”
“Pancakes and strawberries and cream.”
“I can do that!” Lola happily said.
Tartu asked, “How’s your range out there?”
“Terrible as shit! But getting better. I’ll figure it out.” Mark got to walking toward the hub, asking, “Are there range-increasing artifacts out there?”
“Try sticking your adamantium back into your body instead of leaving it out everywhere,” Tartu said, coming into view in the hub, his voice half in the comms, half in the air. “Eria implied it was possible, and I know I have less range when I am low on astral-body-mana.”
Mark smiled at Tartu. “Still haven’t figured that one out yet.”
“What does your special status say now?”
Mark looked it up, saying, “I’ll write out a printout for you over breakfast.”
Mark added, “But for now, I can tell you I have ‘House: Single Brick’, an ‘Extra Lives’ that is ‘secure’ that I think is tied to house size, I am at 8/11 utilized, and I have space for 1 cohort. System Help says that the extra life is me reviving in my house in the dream, and then coming back out somewhere nearby, as long as the dream isn’t too disturbed. So it’s not full-safety. It has weaknesses. That’s why the elves around here have cohorts where they can revive if they die for real.”
“You need to do witch-work to figure out dreams, just like I need to do...”
Tartu walked with Mark to breakfast, talking about all of that and what it could all mean, and if it was a special kind of orichalcum Eria used to give him the ‘pebble’ to start with, or not. Soon, they were at breakfast, and Lola had made a lot of pancakes with fresh whipped cream and strawberries, and everyone was talking, and Mark felt secure.
Freyala was present, but not directly. She hovered behind all of Derek, and David especially, and Lola, when Lola handed Mark more pancakes. Verdago was distantly behind Tartu, as Tartu talked of mangled Bindings and houses, while Hearthswell was in the walls and Dreadnought as Eliot fixed a window that had gotten cracked somehow. Pluta was close at hand behind Andria, as she spoke of orichalcum trading between the Two Worlds, and how ‘the god metal’ wasn’t used for much except for the divine tools of priests and paladins. There was a big market for all of that stuff in Pluta’s church, but it was a niche market. Sally matched Mark for height, which made her a bit bigger than her old self, as she spoke of how some orichalcum tools were anti-demon weapons, but how adamantium was usually simply better, in all ways. Drakarok was behind Sally’s eyes as she spoke of the next tasks, whatever they might be, up to and including warding off assassination attempts.
No one was quite sure what ‘Inheritor’ meant.
And the Dreadnought ate up the sky, passing through glowing orb of light after glowing orb, headed toward wherever the pathways were that led back to the real world.
Eventually, Mark was at the command deck, looking out at Elf Land. He asked anyone who wanted to answer, “Think we’ll ever be back?”
Isoko said, “I don’t think they’d ever want any of us back, except maybe you, Mark, and maybe not for a hundred years.”
Sally added, “If Kialo or anyone else snuck aboard, we might be back sooner rather than later, if only to bring them back home after they find out they absolutely hate mortals.”
Mark snorted.
Eliot called out, “50% chance he’s not on board.”
Mark laughed, and then started teasing, saying, “That’s some shit security you got there!”
“Use those special eyes of yours and go out and check the ship!”
Mark smirked.
… And then he said, “I think I will make the rounds!”
Mark opened up the hatch to the side and leapt out into the sky, flicking a pair of rudders into existence, to fly freely, openly, happily. Isoko joined him, flying a lot easier than he ever could, but Mark flew better with Isoko there, which was great. People helped people, after all. No one was meant to be alone, ever. Mark looked out with his ‘special eyes’ and while there were no obvious elves on the Dreadnought, Mark saw elves gathered in the distances, in the clouds and in the wind itself, watching them and hiding from them as Mark met their gaze.
Mark waved for the world, saying to everyone, “I’m seeing thousands of elves in the clouds, scattered far and wide. Kind of like a send-off party? Not sure.”
“Oh! I have just the thing,” Eliot said.
And then holographic banners unfurled across the ship as fireworks went off in the air, and messages unfurled in light all down the length of the Dreadnought.
‘THANKS FOR THE HOSPITALITY!’
Some elves waved back at that, but other elves grabbed those waving elves and pulled them further out of sight, back into the clouds that were not really clouds, and back into the wind that was only superficially wind.
Mark said, “Some of them like it, Eliot, so I think it’s a success.”
